Klaw plays Trolls, Intermezzo 1: Mauling a Mauler

Playing a different army means that one has to get models together, also known as New Army Syndrome. I’m not the guy to just glue the models together and shlap the official colour scheme on them, no, I like to make things a little more difficult for myself. I always start new projects with fresh courage, telling myself that, this time, I will really create an army to the best of my abilities, one I can be proud of, maybe win prizes with, and so on. Once the first tournament with any painting requirement comes along, I throw all these good intentions overboard, glue the models together, and shlap some paint on them. If I’m lucky, I have established my colour scheme by then so my models will look a little different from the official ones at least.

At the moment, I am in the first stage of the New Army Syndrome so I’m still set on achieving something more. I want an urban and military themed Trollbloods army, with guns, uniforms, and Rambo headbands. However, it has to remain true to the Iron Kingdoms setting, so … the imagery of the Cygnaran army would be the sweet spot. Sort of. It’ll make more sense once I have some models to show for it, or at least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

I started out with this metal Dire Troll Mauler. I want uniforms, and uniforms have pants, so the Mauler is going to wear pants. He had a loincloth hiding his junk, so I took a saw to it1.

This is a treatment I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. It’s actually not very fun to do; it’s difficult to hold the model down well and get good work out of the saw. This won’t come as a surprise to anyone, I assume. Next, I started some reconstruction work with the first layer of greenstuff for the pants:

And to be sure he wouldn’t have any performance issues later, I reconstructed his dangly bits too2.

Uniform pants have belts, so I got him that too, and also a silly helmet so people would forget he’s still a big mean Troll who smashes face. I’m a devious man, I know.

I then scrounged up some tiles I had left from a previous project (made with Hirst Arts moulds), et voilà, the first model in my army was ready for some paint.

Obviously, the painting part is still very much unclear. I am mistreating some unfortunate Scattergunners at the moment – some people3 suggested a desaturated blue for the skin, coupled with grey uniforms, but I wanted more of a terracotta colour for the skin, coupled with green uniforms. Amidst my selection of paints, I had no trouble finding the right blues and greys, but I guess I need to invest in a few more paint bottles to get the right browns and greens for a good comparison. Despite the fact that I don’t have the right tones yet, the green and brown are in the lead.

I’ll keep you posted.

Klaw

(1) And a file, a pair of clippers, and a knife too. At some point, I really felt sorry for him. It’s because I knew it was for his own good, or I’m not sure I would have seen it through.
(2) Though they’re not very free to dangle any more, one of the downsides of pants.
(3) Menace, of course. The man with the Legendary Legion Army4.
(4) Not sure if this is namedropping, or a shoutout. Probably the latter. Also, I can do footnotes in footnotes too! There goes Colin’s4 snowflake ability5.
(5) New thing – looped footnotes! Suck it Colin4!

Author: Klaw

I have a Twitter account @Klawspeaks. I mainly use it for trash talk.
That is for the lack of serious discussion about, for example, this article.